page last updated 9-1-2019

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About IF

IF is a nonprofit humanitarian, educational and social change organization located in the Santa Cruz, CA, area. We are a community of friends seeking hopeful alternatives to the violence, greed and destructiveness of our world. Read more about IF's history and mission

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IF continues to support the courageous work of Pietro Ameglio in Mexico and beyond. IF's support has been integral to Pietro being able to devote himself to nonviolence education and organizing. Pietro is one of the most important nonviolent activists in Latin America today in the specific sense of promoting both the study and the practice of active nonviolence. He has a sophisticated knowledge of nonviolence theory and history, and he combines that with a deep commitment to social justice and decades of front-line experience in nonviolent action. He is an inspiring and popular peace educator who walks his talk, who educates in formal settings as well as on picket lines and at mass actions. Below is his most recent update.

Carola Rackete and Megan Rapinoe are two young women, both captains in their very different domains, one of the sea and the other of soccer/football, just over thirty years old, German and American respectively who, in recent days, decided to defy authority, in different but equally radical ways (“radical” in the sense of going to the root), to show us all the way to build a “moral border” in one’s own identity, by openly and publicly challenging authorities who carry out inhuman policies.Civil disobedience against Salvini Carola Rackete, captain of Sea Watch 3 (650 tons displacement, Dutch flagged search and rescue ship), which is part of a German NGO (headquartered in Berlin) of the same name which rescues shipwrecked migrants on the Mediterranean Sea, on 29 June, docked her boat at the Italian port of Lampedusa, in Sicily, in defiance of orders not to do so, in the process ramming a Coast Guard launch which –invoking jurisdiction over Italian territorial waters—was determined to stop her. As a result, she saved 40 migrants she had previously rescued from the waters of the Mediterranean. The migrants and crew were reaching the limits of survival, and in total desperation; this was the deciding factor for the captain to adopt this moral and practical decision, made especially acute by waiting for 48 hours in front of the port for permission to land. The punishment requested by the extreme right wing Italian government was ten years imprisonment on the grounds of disobedience, attacking a warship, aiding clandestine immigration, and navigation in restricted zones. “It was not an act of violence, but of disobedience… I was under no obligation to obey,” said Carola. The Italian authorities were ordering her to take the migrants back to Libya, a country at war from which they had fled. Captain Rackete also added: “I feel the moral imperative to help somebody who has not had the same opportunities I had… I know what I’m risking, but the 42 shipwrecked migrants were in a very serious condition. I brought them to safety”. Her moral imperative is very clear: disobedience in the face of what is inhuman as a personal and social “virtue” with the intent of “doing good”. In other words, humanizing the species. How many inhuman orders were there against the crew of the Sea Watch 3? How many acts of individual and collective disobedience did Carola, her crew and the migrants have to commit? How many intellectual, epistemological and moral ruptures did they have to face in order to say “no!” and “enough!” to the authorities? Here we see the challenges that all of us have to overcome before we can achieve a real construction of the knowledge –individual and social— necessary for justice, peace and nonviolent resistance. It has been interesting to behold, too, the international campaign by all sorts of actors, including the German government, to put pressure on Italian Prime Minister Mateo Salvini –leader of the ultra-right League Party—stating innumerable valid reasons and heaping praise on Carola’s humanitarian action, which ultimately secured her release. It seems quite clear, then, that Rackete’s civil disobedience action was not only individual, but also part of a long, collective humanitarian culture of repudiation of the legality and legitimacy of inhuman actions, without which our species would still be, culturally, stuck in the Stone Age. Furthermore, it is clear in this case that the decision-making process also involved her entire crew, her organization, and the migrants. Complementing these international political actions, which included demonstrations, media work, social network campaigns, etc., a boat belonging to a Spanish NGO which carries out similar rescue missions on the seas –Proactiva Open Arms—put into port in Strasbourg, near the headquarters of the European Union parliament, to denounce all actions that criminalize migrants and to declare that they were “putting out to sea again to rescue men, women and children who needed it.” So the unjust and inhuman authority decided to stop the spiral of civil disobedience that it saw unfolding. Here we see the use of a nonviolent weapon, a kind of “political judo”, in which the punishment that Salvini attempted to impose on Carola rebounded against him, affecting his international moral legitimacy and creating a high political cost, as a result of which he was obliged to give way. We observe, once again, that the first nonviolent weapon or confrontation –the first battle, as Foucault would call it—is mounting a moral challenge. It was a campaign in which nonviolent actions escalated, demonstrating the “relentless persistence” needed to proportionately oppose an action of state violence of that level. It was a struggle which offered a clear example of the power of nonviolent actions when they are well networked, when they are backed by moral and practical determination that is willing to contemplate non-cooperation and civil disobedience, and when part of society’s moral reserve (for example, the political class, governments, intellectuals, artists, the Pope…) “puts its body on the line” in direct, frontal and open support of a legitimate and just action. Gandhi, Mandela, Martin Luther King, César Chávez, the Zapatista movement, many ethnic, African and peasant peoples… Jesus himself were always very clear about their struggles, always prioritizing moral law over written law, legitimacy over legality. Gandhi – who made distinctions between civil and individual, direct and indirect disobedience—proclaimed, as the cornerstone of the construction of personal and collective morality, that: “Civil disobedienceis the civil violation of immoral and oppressive laws… We obey the law based on our conscience, not through fear of punishment. Civil disobedience is an inalienable right of each citizen. To waive this right means giving up what it means to be human.”Non-Cooperation against Trump “I wouldn’t go to the f***ing White House,” said Megan Rapinoe when faced with the possibility of an invitation from President Trump to the U.S. women’s soccer team which was competing (and later won) the World Cup in France. The now world champion – who also received the Golden Ball and Golden Boot individual awards - had already expressed openly, when she didn’t sing the National Anthem nor place her hand on her heart, that she rejected Trump. Not accepting an invitation to the White House is an action of non-cooperation with authority, in the understanding that, if someone goes to publicly associate with that individual, he/she is directly or indirectly signaling approval of him in his other actions, and is giving him greater moral power to continue with his inhuman deeds. Her action, like that of Carola, is not simply an act of individual rebellion. Both are part of a collective culture that decides to publicly and openly oppose orders from authorities responsible for inhuman acts. Similar to Rapinoe’s case, in recent years we have seen a series of significant public expressions of non-cooperation towards Trump on the part of outstanding U.S. athletes, which kicked-off in August 2016 when Afro-American football quarterback Colin Kaepernick knelt during the National Anthem as an act of protest against the murder of the Afro-American population at the hands of policemen: “I am not going to stand to show pride in the flag of a country that oppresses black and other people of color.” Similarly, Rapinoe declared: “Being gay and American, I know what it means to look at the flag knowing that it does not protect all your liberties.”Due Disobedience to any Inhuman Order This phrase, which refers to the disobedience that is appropriate or owed to inhuman orders, reflects much of our deepest conception of the type of knowledge we must build at intellectual, epistemological and moral levels to allow us to advance in the construction of peace based on nonviolence or other forms of struggle, in an effort to humanize our species. It was coined by eminent Argentine sociologist Juan Carlos (Lito) Marín after long decades of struggle, reflection and social research on the process of the construction within a society of an “anticipated obedience to orders to carry out a punishment when an authority demands it.” As sociologist Myriam Fracchia correctly notes: “To disobey an inhuman order, that is, an order that exerts harm on another or on oneself, is a moral weapon, and the greatest challenge posed by nonviolent action.” (J.C.Marin, Conocimiento y desobediencia a toda orden inhumana {Knowledge and Disobedience to any Inhuman Order}, Prologue by Myriam Fracchia, Cuernavaca, UAEM, 2014: 11). In the Final Declaration of the XXII Congress of the Latin American Association of Sociology (ALAS) in Concepción, Chile in October 1999, this principle was taken up again: “We unanimously affirm that, in the ethical practice of our profession, social scientists cannot limit themselves to formulating a diagnosis of their societies without knowing and facing the multiple dimensions in which the legal monopoly of violence is exercised in an inhuman and arbitrary manner in our continent. Thus, we posit the urgency of collaborating in the construction of a moral judgment that would enable breaking with forms of uncritical obedience to authority, making observable and promoting the due disobedience of any inhuman order.” This theoretical and practical construction requires the complexity of many dimensions. One of the first is to render “observable” all inhuman or unjust actions and to allow these actions to generate in our personal and social identities a “dignified anger” (Zapatista movement) or a “capacity for indignation” (Hessel), keeping in mind the admonition of Hannah Arendt: “…the clearest sign of dehumanization is not anger or violence, but the evident absence of both.“ But… Indignation at what? Towards inhuman orders, which means increasing in each one of us the knowledge necessary to pull apart this type of command that the social order imposes on us with the message that they are totally normal. How can we face these orders that dehumanize us and dehumanize the person who issues them? Another fundamental dimension is to become aware, as Stanley Milgram used to say, that “disobedience is the ultimate instrument by means of which we can end a tension. It is anything but easy…” Therefore, it is not a matter of willfulness, improvisation, or idealism unrooted in a “reality principle”, a careful analysis of a situation. Instead it must be built and put into practice as a public action, taking into account the accumulated historical and personal knowledge of the subjects involved. There is an urgent need for social struggle to build peace with justice. We must promote this kind of capacity building and nonviolent civil resistance actions, including the possibility of non-cooperation and civil disobedience that is proportionate to the level of belligerent actions that we endure. Nothing less will suffice. We need more conscienticized bodies (what Marín calls moral weapons) on the line, starting with our own.Read more on Pietro's activities in Mexico.

Mexico: Update on Sergio Castro/Yok Chij For over 45 years Sergio Castro (Yok Chij) has been working within the indigenous Mayan communities and marginalized Mexicans of San Cristóbal de las Casas in Chiapas, one of the poorest states of Mexico. Don Sergio spends most of his time providing medical and wound care to burn victims, and, with increasing frequency, patients suffering from the effects of type 2 diabetic complications. ​ For calendar year 2017, Don Sergio provides 120-160 patients visits per week, which equates to around 7,800 patient visits per year. Don Sergio does not charge any fees. This healthcare is costly due to non-reusable wound care dressing supplies and daily or every 2 - 3 day visits depending on type and severity of wound and co-morbidities. He is a “one-man-wound-care clinic” and is always moving, hence the name ‘yok chij’, Maya language, Tzotzil for ‘deer foot’, because he’s always moving. Don Sergio's project activities are regularly updated on his blog by Patricia Ferrer, who has worked with him for nine years, @ http://sergiocastrosc.blogspot.mxDONATE to SERGIO CASTRO & YOK CHIJ.

July 2018 Update This July Bill Hill and Penny Rich, two former members of the IF Board, made a trip to visit Sergio Castro and Yok Chij in San Cristóbal de las Casas, Chiapas. Accompanied by our grandchild, Rafaela, a recent high school graduate, we brought 70 pounds of much needed medical supplies to donate to Sergio’s clinic. We also brought an equal weight of school supplies for Sergio to distribute to schools that he has helped construct and renovate.​ We coordinated our visit with the annual visit of Patricia Ferrer, who has been IF’s contact for Yok Chij in the U.S.Patricia, who has worked with Sergio for over 10 years, also brought medical supplies to donate to Sergio’s clinic. She was accompanied by her pre-med nephew Ethan, Deborah, who is a wound expert, and Alejandra, who volunteers at Patricia’s clinic in Tucson. All assisted Sergio in providing primary care and wound care to his patients.

Patricia assists Sergio in their treatment of a 90 year old patient with wounds to his feet

On the first day of the visit, we were invited to attend a graduation ceremony at Escuela Primaria Bilingue, a

school that Sergio has built. It was a wonderful ceremony to witness and the importance of this day to the graduates and their families was quite evident. Students of many grade levels participated in entertaining with traditional dances and speeches. This school teaches in Tzotzil, an indigenous Maya language, and Spanish. It serves approximately 300 children.

Sergio Castro congratulates parents and students on their graduation at Escuela Primaria Bilingue.

Last year IF facilitated a donation to purchase and install a solar system for the school. Now the school has electricity and a water pump, meals can be cooked without burning wood or paying for natural gas, and the school does not have to rely on costly grid electricity. On another day of our visit, we accompanied Sergio and Patricia’s team on home visits to patients in the city and in the outlying communities.Often these patients were too ill or injured to get to the clinic. We also visited Sergio’s clinic in the late afternoon on a number of days. There was a steady stream of patients to be attended to, with ailments that varied from minor to those suffering from extensive diabetic- or vascular-induced wounds.​read more about Don Sergio's work in Chiapas, Mexico